Non-human animals usually prefer silence to our music. However, when cotton-top tamarins heard songs based on their own calls, the diminutive, fluffy primates listened with interest to the monkey music, which even altered their moods, according to a new study.

Music therefore appears to be most effective when it is species specific, suggests the study, published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters.

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Co-author David Teie told Discovery News that "all of the previous studies on the effect of human music on animals has shown that they don't give a hoot about our music."